“Case Histories”

Sorry about the delay again. This one's totally on me, I completely forgot. Here's a picture of a pup to make up for it before I move on to my actual post.

You may continue now to Case Histories.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, is much better than I expected. Of course, the last book I read by her was Life After Life and it’s buried somewhere in here if you are interested. Life After Life was trying to be Case Histories in a way, with all the interweaving story lines and such. It’s just that Case Histories does a much better job with it.

Case Histories is a mystery novel, but one that centers around the individual characters rather than the cases. There are also three cases being examined, so there are quite a few characters. As a result each one of the individuals involved stands out clearly and has their own storyline going on. This is where I tend to take issue with Atkinson, her characters are always so darn sad! There isn’t a pleasant marriage or a happy parent-child relationship that makes it out alive. People might say that it’s more realistic, but she could have thrown in one happy pair to keep my interest alive in the beginning, when they’re all being introduced.

The narration is also pretty interesting, it opens with a “Case History” narrated by one character. She first present the three cases this way. Then the narrating characters carry on the rest of the novel, swapping every chapter. Of course Jackson, the investigator working on all these cases, is added to the mix. This can make it hard to follow, but once you get your bearings within a chapter it’s ok. Often she’ll add details to the end and beginnings of chapters that overlap, so you see the same incident from two viewpoints. This can be confusing or clarifying. Then at the end there’s another “Case History” from the victim revealing the secret Jackson found. Because it doesn’t come out in his narration, it’s not his story.

She also talks a lot about the aftermath of these crimes, how they affect those remaining. Most of these cases are several years old, so you see the remaining scars. Which is a more interesting angle, I think, than right after because all that suffering will manifest in different ways after all that time.

There’s also this recurring theme of children and the dead being angels and whatever, which got a little annoying after a while. Another one is the middle aged adult who hates his/her life. Makes me wonder what Atkinson thinks of her own life.

Each of the cases is linked in a way, but it doesn’t become obvious until the end of the novel how. Which adds another layer of complexity, it’s both a whodunit and a connectthem. And of course everything wraps up neatly. A little too neatly, but I guess the characters deserve it after all that they have been through.